“I'll go through the book, Mr. Walton,” the clerk said. “It wouldn't take so awful long. I would only have to run through the W's, you know, and needn't look in the _little_ places. If he is in the wholesale line, he must be in a town of over ten thousand.” “That's a fact, that's a fact,” Walton agreed. “I reckon he didn't think of that when he gave me his name, though I acknowledge I kinder gouged it out of him when he was good and hot. Go bring the book here and set at my desk. I'll not let the rest bother you. My Lord! my Lord! What a mess!” All that afternoon the clerk bent over the huge volume with its closely printed columns on very thin paper. The closing hour came. The typewriters and clerks went home and the front door was shut, but still Toby read, patiently running the point of his pencil down column after column. Night came on, and less than half of the book still remained to be scanned. “Go home to supper and come back,” Walton said, a strange light burning in his shrewd eyes. “I'll meet you here. I want this thing settled. I don't believe I could sleep with the doubt on my mind as to whether that man was fooling me or not. It is a big thing--a powerful big thing. If Fred has made himself of enough importance to have a man like that come a long distance in his behalf, why, you see, I ought to know about it, that's all--I ought to know about it.” “Yes, you ought to know, Mr. Walton,” Lassiter said, as he laid a blotter between the pages and reached for his hat. They went out together and walked side by side to the corner, where the clerk had to turn off. “You sort o' believed in Fred all along, Toby,” the banker said, tentatively--“that is, you used to talk him up to some extent.” “I thought he was in earnest about what he wrote in that last good-bye letter, Mr. Walton. It made a deep impression on me. It sounded perfectly straight. And awhile back, when his _other_ letter came, bringing all that cash, I was more sure than ever. Even when you said you believed it was a trick, somehow I couldn't exactly look at it that way.” “Well, see if you can locate this Whipple,” Walton said, and, turning off, he trudged heavily homeward through the gathering shadows. He was on his way back to the bank about nine o'clock when he saw Toby coming toward him. The clerk was walking rapidly, swinging his long arms to and fro like pendulums. “Well, well?” Walton exclaimed, as they met face to face on the sidewalk in the flare of a gas-light. “I have found him!” Toby chuckled. “There is no mistake. Stephen Whipple is a whopping big wholesale grocer at Gate City, Oklahoma. He's rated at over a million, with credit at the top notch.” “You don't say!” A negro laborer with a bag of flour on his shoulder was passing close by, and Walton laid his hand warmingly on the arm of his clerk and drew him slowly along.